Teraa Surroor: More noise than sense

Music director and singer Himesh Reshammiya is back and he isn't strumming a guitar and belting out numbers in his signature nasal style.

This time around, he launches big time into action star mode as a gangster with a heart of gold. It is his gun that does all the talking.

And that is just as well. Teraa Surroor has neither the narrative depth nor the weighty dialogue that can aid a pedestrian thriller transcend the limits of the genre.

With a six-pack to go with his new screen avatar, Himesh sleepwalks through the role of a sharpshooter who pulls out the stops to free his sweetheart (debutante Farah Karimaee) from jail.

The girl has been caught with drugs by the Dublin police in a frame-up and the only way that she can escape the prospect of a long haul in legal confinement in a foreign land is by breaking the law.

The unflappable hero, with some help from a cynical con artist named Rabin Dharmaraj Santino (Naseeruddin Shah), figures out a way to mount a jailbreak attempt that pits him and his girlfriend against the Dublin police and a mysterious gang.

The spectacle that ensues does not create any real tension because from the very moment that the male protagonist vows to get his girl out of prison the audience knows how the action is going to pan out.

Besides Naseeruddin Shah, the cast has actors like Shekhar Kapur, Kabir Bedi and Shernaz Patel, but in a film dominated by a poker-faced Himesh Reshammiya they only have ten minutes each at best to pull off a rescue act.

That is, of course, far more difficult than the 20 minutes that the hero has to outsmart the Dublin cops before they city placed under lockdown and the escape plan is thwarted.

Himesh plays a character that remains unfazed even in the most trying circumstances, which allows the actor the luxury of wearing a single expression all through the film.

The lead actor has a perfectly matched ally in Farah Karimaee, who too manages to go through the motions without letting any tangible emotion flash across her face.

So, despite the fact that there isn't much chemistry between the two, Himesh and Farah come across as a made-for-each-other screen couple.

This is a Himesh Reshammiya film, so there is no dearth of songs here, but not all of them are in the star's own voice.

The musical numbers only serve as speed-breakers in a film that is anyways rather thin in terms of twists and turns.

Teraa Surroor is strictly for Himesh Reshammiya fans. There is little else in this 106-minute film that might be worth the price of a trip to the multiplex.